Nintendo on Japan vs. North America 3DS Performance

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Is the 3DS really 'weak' in the United States?

By Richard George

For the past year, Nintendo has been talking a lot about the 3DS's momentum around the world. After slashing the system's price, the company quickly released several major games, including Super Mario 3D Land, Kid Icarus Uprising, Mario Tennis Open and New Super Mario Bros. 2. It even introduced a new version of the portable, the 3DS XL, in various color configurations across the world. Still, when it came time to characterize the 3DS's global performance in late June, Nintendo of Japan president Satoru Iwata noted the system was "weak" in the United States and Europe.

When we recently chatted Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, we asked for an update on that situation - and his reaction to Iwata's comments. "When he said that, I had a sharp pain in my neck. It was in the middle of the night, and I viscerally reacted to it," Fils-Aime joked.

Still, the executive noted that there was still a clear disparity between what's happening in Japan versus the part of the world he watches over. "The fact of the matter is that Japan is doing better than the North American marketplace. That is a factually true statement," Fils-Aime said. "It's driven by the strong level of support that they've had from Japanese third-party publishers. There's been a number of games like Monster Hunter that did big numbers. But just as important, there was a group of games in the Japanese market that did between 250,000 units and half a million units. Those sustained that gamer desire to have something new on a regular basis."

So why the weakness elsewhere? A lack of games - of support from companies outside Nintendo. Fils-Aime explained that the titles that have been sustaining the Japanese market have been absent from the North American market. He did, however, note that there are some signs of that changing. Kingdom Hearts 3DS, for example, was released in the United States in late July, and ranked highly on the August NPD sales charts, particularly considering it wasn't a multi-platform release. Combine that with the launch of the XL and New Super Mario Bros. 2, and the 3DS continues to outpace the DS itself, something Fils-Aime views as a key measure of the hardware's performance. "At the same point of the life cycle, DS had actually had two holidays, and even with that, Nintendo 3DS is about a million units ahead in terms of installed base versus the DS base... so we're tracking well," Fils-Aime said.

But what about those games? Surely some of the material being released in Japan, that is making that market so strong, could be localized for release here. Though the West finally has confirmation that a version of Monster Hunter Tri will be making its way to the 3DS, there's still no definitive word on games like Bravely Default, Project X Zone or even Monster Hunter 4. "In the end, this is a business," Fils-Aime explained, when asked why some of these games just don't seem to be making their way outside of Japan. "[Publishers] need to look at the opportunity as far as how much they're going to sell versus the investment and make a business decision."

While third parties are certainly looking at the localization process from a business perspective, Nintendo certainly must have a vested interest in having more titles arrive in North America to keep its momentum going. Though certainly a "chicken and egg" sort of dilemma, if no games come out, the hardware won't sell, increasing resistance to the platform. We asked Fils-Aime if Nintendo had a role to play in encouraging third parties to bring some of these titles to the North American market. "Certainly," Fils-Aime said. "We always engage with third-party publishers about their content and help them make smart decisions. Whether that's Western publishers or Japanese publishers. There are opportunities for some of these games to come to the Americas. There have been times when we've published those games in that type of show of support. We've certainly encouraged it."

Let's just hope we see the results of that encouragement soon. If the Japanese market is any indication, there even more reasons to own a 3DS - they're just not here in North America (or Europe) yet.

Rich is an Executive Editor of IGN.com and the leader of IGN's Nintendo team. He also watches over all things WWE, Resident Evil, Assassin's Creed and much more. Follow him on Twitter, if you dare!